1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to electronic messaging, and more particularly, to system-generated prefixes in the subject header field of electronic mail messages.
2. Description of Background
In computer communication networks, one method of communication is electronic mail (email), in which a sending user prepares and sends a message over some form of computer network to a receiving user, usually on a remote system. Most email clients, which are front-end computer programs that are used to read, write, and send email messages, also provide software to facilitate reading, saving, printing and replying to email. Because email messages can be sent at any time across the world as easily as across the office, to a group of people or a single recipient, without the user leaving his or her desk, email can provide considerable benefits over traditional paper based memos and postal systems. Until recently, the use of electronic mail was the single biggest generator of traffic volume on the Internet.
A typical email message consists of lines of ASCII test and is structured to begin with a set of message header fields (or header lines) that is followed by a message body. Some header fields are mandatory and others are optional. The header fields have a fixed format that includes a keyword name immediately after newline that is followed by a colon character, a space, and a value, which consists of a string of bytes in the field alter the colon that is continued on non-null subsequent lines. The usual header fields for an email message include at least the ‘From:’ field, which provides the email address of the message's sender and optionally the name of the sender; the ‘To:’ field, which the provides the email address(es) of the message's recipient(s) and optionally the name(s) of the recipient(s); the ‘Subject:’ field, which can provide a brief summary or indicate the nature of the message's contents, and the ‘Date:’ field; which provides the local time and date when the message was written. The message body follows the headers and is separated from them by a blank line.
An active email user sends and receives a number of messages in any given day. Some messages that are received are junk mail that can be discarded unread, some are urgent alerts to be dealt with immediately, and other messages are pushed aside until the user has spare time available to read them. Because most email client programs include features to display a one-line summary of each message that typically includes the value of the subject field, truncated if necessary, a user can utilize the information provided in ‘Subject’ header field, or subject header, to aid in making these decisions, as well as to locate old messages that have pushed aside when a time to read them arises. The subject header value typically contains free-from text that concisely indicates the general topic(s) discussed in the message.
Current technology allows for people to communicate across the globe with others who speak and understand different languages. Nevertheless, even though people are able to communicate with a common language, their local email clients can be configured differently. For example, where a US-localized email client adds or prepends a ‘Re:’ character string prefix to the subject header value of an email that is being replied to, that same character string is displayed by the recipient's email client when the message is being read, independently of the recipient's client localization. In another example, where a first user using a US-localized email client sends an email to a second user that is using an email client localized for China (that is, set to Chinese (PRC)), if the second user replies, the first user's email client may display the word Reply in Chinese as □□ prepended to the subject header value or, if the first user does have a Chinese font or language pack installed that would support the display of these symbols, the first user's email client may simply display gibberish where the reply prefix would appear in the subject header field. This may lead to results that are confusing for the first user, as well as to other users if, for instance, the reply message is later forwarded to a third user. The appearance of unrecognizable subject header value prefixes can also have many other undesirable effects including, for example, disassociating the reply or forward messages from the message thread from which the messages arose in email client applications that use the subject line for message arrangement or sorting. These problems can be exacerbated if the email clients involved are configured to prepend additional prefixes without trimming any previously added prefixes from the subject line.